


Till Death Do Us Join

by RustDyke



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I'll be honest I have no idea how to tag this, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Spoilers for Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), look I promise this is supposed to be light hearted, major character death except not really, minor depictions of violence and death in the first scene, silver snow and crimson flower, soft smut, supposed to being the operative part there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:01:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29184459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RustDyke/pseuds/RustDyke
Summary: “It looks as though… your path ends here.”She thought she imagined the tremble in her former student’s voice as it echoed across the grand and lonely throne room.“I knew that when we met again that one of us would breathe our last. Some part of me had always thought that your path would lie across my grave. Until now… I could not truly accept that it would be mine that lies across yours.”Byleth wanted to lower her head, yet she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t look away from the sadness that broke through that mask of determination.“If you must fall, then let it be by my hand. I do not think I could bear that weight if it had been any other way.” She moved closer, the knelling of her sabatons punctuating every step.“My teacher. I wanted… to walk with you.”Edelgard’s strained whisper was drowned in the hum of Aymr bearing down upon Byleth’s head, scattering her last thoughts into oblivion.Yet fate was equally cruel and kind.She left the world at the hands of an enemy clad in her own regret.And awoke in the arms of her loving wife
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 20
Kudos: 125





	1. Our Paths Will (Never) Cross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Bummer of a start

Her breaths came to her slow and ragged, each one a more strained effort than the last. Her limbs burned with exhaustion, pleading for her to stop, to give in and let all else be damned. Her shoulder throbbed in agony, the arm below it felt cold and numb despite the warm rivulets of blood that ran down it. The endless tiled limestone floor with stretching paths of crimson carpet, the shadows of towering granite columns that dwarfed even the mightiest of trees, the vast walls and vaulted ceiling both dark and lustrous all at once— it all spun around in a blur of shapes and colors like the haze of a forlorn dream that threatened to swallow her forever. 

Byleth had pushed through this physical weariness more times than she could remember. When by all rights she should have collapsed, should have met her end, she always found the strength to defy it all. Allies and enemies alike could not help but believe that if all the world came down to bear down on her that it would be her alone left standing. 

The Enlightened One, the future Archbishop and queen of all of Fódlan, a savior with an indomitable will, the Goddess herself. Grand titles for a figure larger than life, worthy of worship in the way she swayed the hearts of all who followed her. They looked to her to cut a path to a new dawn for humanity. 

She hated it. 

She hated everyone. All the people who had forced these things on her. A burden she never wanted, never asked for. The path she walked was anything but her own.

No. That was a selfish lie. She only hated herself. For all that the fate had elevated her to be, for all whom she inspired with hope and awe, deep beneath was nothing but a weak and wretched human haunted by hurt and regret. 

They would expect her to defy the crushing tides that crashed against her once more. To stand strong for everyone who believed in her. To win no matter what happens. And she would let them down. 

She didn’t have the will to endure this.

She didn’t have the will to keep living this falsehood.

Because for all the faith that her friends and allies placed in her, the only truth was that she deserved none of it.

She had abandoned the first person to believe not in what they wished for her to be, but for the person she truly was beneath it all.

She was a coward who had forsaken the only person to ever offer her a choice, and when she came to that crossroad five years ago she made the coward's choice and did as she was told, just as she always had, and pointed her blade at her dearest friend. To tell herself otherwise would be nothing but a pathetic lie to soothe the guilt that suffocated her every moment since.

Byleth fell to her knees, her weapon falling to the ground with a dull clang beside her. She couldn’t fight anymore. She could turn back the hands of time again and again until she found her victory and finally took away the last thing the emperor had left, but she could not bring herself to try. She didn’t _want_ to fight anymore.

The woman she had stood against throughout this endless struggle stepped into the sun’s rays between them that cascaded from the skylight above. Byleth weakly raised her head to face her. To gaze upon her deepest regrets in her final moments. The emperor deserved that much from the person she once called a beloved friend, if nothing else. Edelgard looked radiant before her dressed in fire and gold. Despite her own injuries and exhaustion, she stood tall and determined. This was someone who endured pain and misery beyond anything Byleth could imagine, and despite it all she always forged onward for what she believed in.

This was someone who deserved to live on to see her dreams realized. Those dreams she built in place of any hope of her happiness she once had that were so cruelly crushed when she was a terrified child, alone in her despair. Dreams that Byleth had tore down brick by painful brick with nothing to put in place of it.

What a wretched person she was.

“It looks as though… your path ends here.”

Byleth thought she imagined the tremble in her former student’s voice as it echoed across the grand and lonely throne room. 

She wondered if it was better that her allies fighting outside were not here with her. Even if she deserved to be seen as the weak and pathetic person she truly was, they still would have fought to stop the emperor. All because Byleth had. Her fate, her punishment— it belonged to Edelgard alone. 

“I knew that when we met again that one of us would breathe our last. Some part of me had always thought that your path would lie across my grave. Until now… I could not truly accept that it would be mine that lies across yours.”

Byleth wanted to lower her head and stare at the ground until she could finally leave this existence forever, and all the miserable mistakes she could never take back. Yet she couldn’t look away. She couldn’t look away from the sadness that broke through that mask of determination. 

Did Edelgard want her to say something? Did she want her to apologize for all the pain she caused her? To lay bare her own hurt and regret? Or would that just twist the knife Byleth had plunged into her chest so long ago? Regardless of which, she couldn’t bring herself to say a word.

A coward until the very end, she thought bitterly. She let her head droop down to stare at the floor and accept her end.

“If you must fall, then let it be by my hand. I do not think I could bear that weight if it had been any other way.” She moved closer, the knelling of her sabatons punctuating every step. 

“My teacher.” Edelgard’s words felt as heavy as the air around them.

Byleth could see the glow of Edelgard’s axe shift as she lifted it; her legs brace as she prepared to shoulder the burden Byleth would leave her with. A final scar to bear with all the others she had left her with. Byleth deserved worse than this, as much as Edelgard deserved better. 

“I wanted… to walk with you.” 

Edelgard’s strained whisper was drowned in the hum of Aymr bearing down upon Byleth’s head, scattering her last thoughts into oblivion.

### 

The nauseating pain ringing in her skull was the first thing Byleth was aware of. Everything was dark and soundless, her sluggish thoughts obscured deep beneath a cloying mire as her very sense of being came to her in vaporous wisps. 

The first vision in her mind’s eye was Edelgard. Splintered memories— the chance meeting that entwined their lives, peaceful days spent with the rest of their class at the monastery, the lectures that her house leader offered to review in advance for the mercenary turned professor so far out of her element, the animated conversations they all had in the dining hall that somehow always lent themselves to some manner of amusing spectacle, warm summer days that the two of them spent drinking tea beneath the pergola to exchange idle conversation and let the scent of flowers and songs of birds ease their troubles. Memories of battles fought side by side, bonds forged in peril and blood; of reluctantly shared vulnerability on somber nights. Promises stand by one another in their most painful moments. Memories of a mask beneath a mask; of betrayal and hesitation swept in endless circles around a drain, until one of them would finally fall within, forever lost. 

And it had been her. Edelgard had killed her. She was dead, her body growing cold in pooling blood on the floor of the Imperial throne room, her executioner standing above. Byleth wondered if the woman she had once been friends with would shed tears for her, or if the tears she might have shed had long since dried away. Would she step over her corpse and continue her own struggle? Would she smash the now leaderless army that stormed her palace? Or would she still meet the end that Byleth couldn’t deliver? Would she bury her teacher after she won her future? Would she visit her to tell her about the world she created? Or would Byleth be lost in an unmarked grave, forgotten.

It was the latter, Byleth thought, that she deserved. For all the death and destruction that the followers of the Church despised the emperor for, it was Byleth’s lack of vision and resolve that caused the most suffering. She had uprooted the seeds Edelgard had planted and instead salted the earth. The quick death she received was far better than she deserved. 

But she was dead now, and part of death was that the futures of the living would be forever out of reach. She wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of her actions or failures. She left the woman she had hurt time and time again to pick up those pieces. 

What a wretch she was, even when she was no more. 

Then… Why was she with her thoughts now? Did the dead not find solace in silence after all? She had never believed that they came to rest with the Goddess. She had seen many die, and despite being entwined with the soul of Sothis, the dead were out of reach all the same. 

Was she to experience an eternity alone with her regrets? In a darkness that she would not be able to cleave through this time, no students beaming with joy and relief waiting for her on the other side? 

Perhaps she hadn’t cheated her penance after all.

“Byleth?” A soft voice called to her through the formless prison of her own soul, rousing her in a way she could not grasp. It wasn’t the echoed voice of a memory ringing in her thoughts. It sounded real. Like she could reach out and touch it.

“Byleth? Love?” It sounded closer. Sothis? Would she see her dear companion in this afterlife? No, the voice was disorientingly familiar, but not- 

The throbbing in her head that she should no longer have been able to feel returned and scattered her thoughts with a dull, congested ache. Byleth shifted with a pained groan that resonated inside of her, and she felt as if she were made of lead, too heavy to lift herself. 

Her own voice. Her own body. 

Byleth tried to command her fingers to move, and they tightened around thin, silken fabric that bunched in her hand. Sensation slowly returned to her in trickling fragments. Her heavy eyelids fluttered open, squinting against the soft sunlight streaming through a gap between crimson curtains. She was lying on her side in a bed, she realized. An extraordinarily soft bed, her body blanketed with a heavy duvet. Her eyes sluggishly took in the room from where she lay. Her surroundings were beautiful, with ornately patterned curtains and rich wooden walls adorned with elegant molds and trim of all manner of shapes from the rising and falling of simple shapes and lines to the intricate spiraled carvings that conjured images of blossoming winds. Yet for all the refinement innate to the room itself, it was sparsely decorated. Nearest to her a porcelain vase filled with carefully preened flowers that bloomed into bursts of blood red, and to its side a pewter pitcher embossed with the twin-headed eagle, the sigil of Adrestia. 

Her mind struggled to catch up with what had happened in the moments before she had awoken, trying to make sense of where she was now. She was obviously still in Adrestia, and judging by the exquisite surroundings, likely inside the imperial palace itself. Had she not died? Was Edelgard defeated after all? Had the powers of Sothis saved her from her end once more, even against her own wishes? Soon, she supposed, Manuela would come to check on her, then she would inform Seteth that they still had their leader for the Church, their lauded ruler for all of Fódlan. Byleth groaned again, her voice's rumblings feeling clearer to her now as her mind surfaced to clarity. What a cruel punishment, she thought to herself with settling despair.. She would have rather stayed dead.

“My heart? Are you awake? You were tossing and mumbling in your sleep.” a gentle voice tickled the back of her ear with warm breaths. 

In that moment, Byleth became aware of the hand that softly clasped her shoulder, and the long forgotten warmth that came with the intimate closeness of another. Sudden panic struck her in her realization that there was someone else in the bed with her. Reflexively she rolled away, only to entangle herself in the sheets and duvet that lay over her. She fell awkwardly off the edge of the bed, the back of her head catching the corner of the table next to it and filling her vision with sparks of pain. The dull pulses in her skull quickened and intensified, but still she struggled haplessly to scramble further away from the bed, hindered by the incidental bindings, her face pressed to the smooth carpet beneath her.

“Byleth!” A distressed gasp escaped the lips of her unknown bedmate. 

Byleth’s neck strained as she struggled to turn her head and catch sight of its source, ignoring the sharp prick against her cheek that roughly grazed the carpet. A woman who apparently knew her name though she could not begin to imagine who would be so forward as to lay with her in recovery. 

What she saw chilled every inch of her body as if she had been plunged beneath an icy lake, struggling in vain to bring air into her burning lungs. 

Peering over the edge of the bed above her was a familiar face cast in an uncannily soft expression. It was Edelgard. Yet, it couldn’t have been. Her brilliant white hair hung loosely along the frame of her face, tussled by night’s rest, and her hand clasped over her own mouth, her brow was scrunched in alarm, her lilac eyes shimmered deeply with something Byleth could not ken. She had never seen her friend look at her this way, not even in their blissful facade of their academy days. And it hurt. To see that softened, heartfelt look upon that face hurt so much that she couldn’t bear it. What manner of cruel fate would inflict her with this phantasm? Was she truly so terrible as to deserve this? Her chest fluttered with rising dread, pounding so intensely that it felt as if she could hear it in her ears like erratic drumming.

Her chest.  
Her heart. 

Delirium seized her, and the ceaseless beating only fed it.

“Edel...gard?” she croaked, her throat unbearably dry. Her breaths came to her short and rapid. Her head spun, her limbs bursted in tingling sparks. Her entire body felt as if it would split away from her while she could only helplessly feel it happen. 

“I’m here, Byleth. I’m here.” The hallucination shaped as her former friend and student kneeled beside her, dressed only in a simple, white nightgown that made her look even more like a ghost. “It’s okay, I’m right here.” she cooed softly, cupping Byleth’s cheek in the warmth of her hand. 

“What’s... happ...en...ing?” Byleth’s words came out between fearful gasps. The beating in her chest only grew worse, the air desperately filling her lungs did nothing. “I... can’t… breathe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: "I want a sweet little love and fluff story I can play with between writing chapters for my long-form fic."
> 
> My brain: "Got it, no problem."
> 
> Me: "Alright, what have you got so far?"
> 
> My brain: "Byleth hates herself and lets Edelgard kill her to escape a life of guilt and regret."
> 
> Me: "Huh..."
> 
> So yeah, I'm pouring all of myself into my main fic, but its so much slow burn, plot heavy, and serious in tone.  
> I wanted something I could write more casual and light-hearted on and off and not have to think as hard about, I say as I write out thoughts of bitter self-loathing, regret within death, and Byleth having a panic attack.  
> I guess my brain is more comfortable with writing hurt, but I swear this story is supposed to be sweet with only light hurt from here on out. Probably.
> 
> The throne room cutscene in SS/VW is so hauntingly painful. As I've gotten older I find it more difficult to cry but El's last words cut so deep. Rewriting it with roles reversed was kinda cathartic and inspired by some amazing Edeleth angst art and comics on twitter
> 
> Yes my headcanon is that Byleth couldn't have panic attacks while her heart didn't beat. CF Byleth had a while to get used to a beating heart. SS Byleth hasn't.


	2. I've Always (Wanted to Have) Been There For You

“Focus on my touch”

Byleth could feel a hand clasp around her own tightly. A thousand thoughts bounced about her skull like frenzied hornets. Why was this happening? What was this horrible suffocating sensation in her chest? Why was she so afraid to die when she had been so ready to accept her end just before? Why did the hand clutching hers feel so real when nothing else did? Everything threatened to tear her away into some unknowable terror that she could not seem to grasp. Everything except for that touch.

“Listen to my voice. You’re here with me. We’re in our room. You’re safe.” Edelgard’s voice was so gentle; imbued with concern. Concern for _her_. It couldn’t be real. None of this could be real. Yet the hand that held her own pushed back against the dread, grounding her in a sensation that felt tangible despite the vicious doubt that commanded her to reject it. 

“Byleth.”

She hazily looked up into those lilac eyes, eyes filled with so much light compared to the torturous gaze she could do nothing but shrivel beneath. The determination that shone on her now somehow felt less distant in this unreality. 

“Now, take a deep breath with me, until you can’t breathe in anymore, and hold it with me.. Okay?”

Byleth nodded through her spell of maddening stupor. Even if the errant voice in her head screamed that this was nothing but a pitfall into further torment, she desperately wanted to believe in this apparition; to succumb to this delusion and make it real. She was too afraid to wish for her own suffering now. She wanted to believe that Edelgard would truly hold her close in her last moments. She did as she was asked and took a deep breath in. Her chest still shuddered in its incessant pounding, clawing at her very being with each burning throb, but she held her breath, if only because it was what this phantom Edelgard wanted from her. 

“Now, count with me” Edelgard said in a hush, holding her own breath back.

Edelgard slowly counted backwards from ten, and Byleth focused herself on every whisper. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

“Now breathe out, slowly.”

Byleth let the air escape her lungs in a steady exhale.

“Okay, now, please do it with me again.”

They repeated the ritual several times over, and with each repetition Byleth could feel the drumming within her slow. She didn’t have the wherewithal to know how much time might have passed, but Edelgard’s hand never left her own throughout the entirety of it. Her head still felt uncomfortably clouded, but her breathing eventually steadied, as did her… heart. She tentatively placed a shaking hand over her chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath. The sensation nearly drove her to losing herself all over again and all she could do to stop the encroaching plunge was squeeze the fingers within her hand, as if this one presence in this nightmare would fade away if she let go. 

“Everything’s going to be alright. I’m here with you, I have you, my love.” she assured her, as if she could read the erratic thoughts that seemed to continuously slip from the grasp of Byleth’s conscious mind. “Here, let me take care of this.” Edelgard lifted the skirt of her nightgown and dabbed at Byleth’s cheek. She noticed the red splotch that stained it as she pulled it away and she slowly pivoted her head to the floor beside her in a subdued daze. The flower vase had shattered, the carnations it held now buried beneath alabaster shards. Something about the sight made the world seem more tangible. She had knocked the vase over. She was bleeding. These did not seem like the machinations of a lost mind in the throes of death’s grip.

“Why am I here?” she muttered, daring to challenge this illusion. “What happened?”

Edelgard shushed her as she carefully untangled the bedding from around her body. “It was just a bad dream, my love.” She gingerly brushed away strands of hair that clung to the cold sweat upon Byleth’s face and began running her fingers along her scalp. “Do you think you can stand for me? I’ll have someone clean up the mess. We’re going to get you some water and then we can step into the garden. I think a walk in the sun will help.”

“No…” Byleth protested weakly, “The battle, what happened? I thought I… that you…” her words trailed off, unsure of how to repeat what had happened to the face of the very person who had struck her down. Edelgard should have known better than anyone. The student she once knew nor the emperor she fought in a struggle that engulfed a continent would never play such games with her like this. Even in the revelations of Edelgard’s most closely guarded vulnerabilities or machinations, she had always been honest with her when these things came to light. This must have been a dream after all— only Byleth could not determine whether she was experiencing grief-stricken hallucinations in the solitude of her recovery, or if these were the bitter hauntings of the afterlife. 

“Oh… oh Byleth.” Edelgard wrapped her arms tightly around Byleth’s shoulders. “The war ended years ago. We won our peace. You don’t have to fight anymore, all of our friends are safe and well. You were having a nightmare, everything is going to be okay.”

Byleth jerked away from the embrace, her unsettled confusion seizing her anew. Edelgard appeared taken aback at this, biting the bottom of her lip in befuddled concern. As if Byleth would have honestly reacted in any other way. What had she possibly expected? She was her enemy, they had spilt so much blood, wasted so many lives, met at the crossroads of death only to destroy each other in some way. Edelgard should have hated her, and yet the way she regarded her was something else entirely. What did she want from her? She had never been one to toy with people, and yet she said such horrible things, looked at her in such torturous ways that drove Byleth to believe she had maybe succumbed to feverish madness. Or maybe that was the simple reflection of regrets cast in undeniable clarity, whether it be the vivid fabrication of her own dying woes or every ounce of her being had finally been broken in any realm of her own reality. How could she ever bear such a thing? Could she not be free of her own hells?

“Years ago!? That’s-” The heart that should have been silent returned to its rapid spasm. The possibility that she had unknowingly slept for years once again dawned on her. Another reality that she had woke to, recognizing nothing but the change that had claimed all that had once been familiar. The guilt of actions she had not thought of, that she had not even imagined that she would live to see, began to push down upon her shoulders with the force of all that the world had to inflict upon her. “I don’t understand.” she muttered. Whatever delusion or reality it may have been, she couldn’t bring herself to entertain any of it. “I thought you killed me. I let you kill me.” Byleth’s voice broke, a raw and disgusting sob breaching through her throat. She felt warm droplets of tears slip from the corners of her eyes and her vision blurred. Tears? She hadn’t cried since…

“Byleth…” Edelgard hesitated, her eyes shining with the threat of her own hurt. “Byleth, I would never… you’re worrying me.” She put the back of her hand against Byleth’s forehead and held it there for a brief moment. In those passing seconds she suddenly realized how bare Edelgard’s body was in her nightgown, and the array of scars that covered her. Many held some familiarity— the marks of battle, and the wear and tear of stubbornly shrugging off injury. But the way most crossed her skin like cracks in a vase that was painstakingly put back together was unlike any that Byleth wore, save for the single deep pale line that ran over her heart. She had never seen Edelgard so exposed. Her thoughts were pulled to a distant memory; a night in which her student has opened up to her in a fleeting moment of raw vulnerability. Byleth has only been able to try and imagine the horrors she recalled then. In that moment she caught a glimpse of a terrified child that struggled to reach out beneath that surface of cold steel and burning fire. It was something she never saw again, never offered a comforting hand to since. That had been a lifetime ago. It felt more like the wispy haze of a dream forgotten bit by bit every day— even when she had yearned to return to that moment and make things right. To do more.

“You don’t seem to have a fever.” Edelgard continued softly, seemingly unaware of the thoughts that plagued the other within…

“Please…” her voice sounded so pitiful, and she felt more so for it. “Please... please, I beg you, if this is real, please, don’t lie to me. Tell me what happened. Tell me why you didn’t kill me. Why-“ she choked on the wretched sound of her own desperation, “Why didn’t you kill me? Why? WHY? I wanted it! It’s the only thing I wanted! I know I could have…” Byleth’s voice fell to a hoarse whisper, “It was all I could do, Edelgard. It was all I could offer to you. It was what I deserved.” 

It was Edelgard who pulled away this time, and Byleth could not dare to look at her face through her tears. Part of her feared that the illusion would shatter into jagged shards that dug painfully into her palms the harder she tried to hold to them. This false and fleeting comfort would be forever gone, and she would plunge further into whatever it was that awaited her in this despairing journey. 

“Byleth…” the phantom’s voice trembled, echoing the pain that the other felt. “I’m so sorry, I feel so lost, my love. I can’t see into whatever it is that ails you.” Byleth felt fingers faintly brush across her own, which dug and scraped into the bare skin of her thigh. “But I want to help. Please let me help you.” 

Byleth jerked away so violently that she fell to the floor upon her shoulder, kicking and clawing away from the locus of her horrible turmoil. “STOP THIS!” her voice an exosive choked and raspy sob, neary incoherent in her delerious turmoil. “I HATE MYSELF! IS THAT WHAT YOU MUST HEAR?” Please no more. “I HATE MYSELF, AND I’M SORRY THAT I MADE YOU... made you k-” she gasped in a sharp and shallow breath, her lungs feeling as if they would cease to work next time she tried.  
Let it end.  
“ISN’T THAT ENOUGH? PLEASE, STOP THIS, PLEASE, I CAN’T TAKE– I CAN’T– I C-C-C-“ her screams violently crumpled into incoherent sputters and shallow breaths as she fell over herself in her frantic scramble away from the horrified lilac gaze that now fixed upon her. And she ran. She slammed into the door and fumbled for its handle. Before she even realized she had unlocked and escaped it she found herself racing down a blur of unfamiliar corridors, tripping as her bare feet clumsily slammed wildly one after the other on the endless crimson carpet before her, veering left and right as if she were utterly drunk, stumbling and slamming into the wall and falling to the floor just to scramble to her feet again and again.

Her lungs burned with each painful gasp, her head spun, her hands and feet tingled again. The world blurred and swirled and closed in upon her in a tempest of swirling shape and light. She collapsed onto the ground, her face scraping against a rough surface, the pain jerking her into sudden stop. She struggled to her hands and knees and spinning nausea overtook her. Her body clenched and seized, her fingers curled desperately against the cobblestone below and she wretched upon it. Her body lurched and threatened to fall back to the ground into the pool of bile with each painful, groaning heave.

“Professor? What happened to you? Something you ate?” A voice drawled, followed with a loud yawn.

Byleth’s entire body went cold. No… no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Despite every ounce of chilling fear that gripped her, she raised her head, a familiar shape taking form through her fuzzy sensation. 

“Do you need me to take a look at you? Some food poisoning can actually be quite harmful.” The man bent down, his twilight eyes studying her with scrutiny. A familiar and endearing look she never thought she’d see again.

_“Let me go! He’s still in there! We have to help him, he’s still in there, I know he is!” Caspar kicked and thrashed against Ferdinand’s desperate grasp, his eyes wide and wild in a ferocious battle against his own painful despair, spittle flecked upon the corners of his mouth with each hoarse scream._

_“Caspar! Caspar, please! You can’t go in there alone, we don’t know how dangerous it could be!” Ferdinand shouted as he struggled to keep his arms locked beneath smaller man’s through the frenzy, fighting off the pain that haunted his own sandstone eyes. “We don’t know if more of those… those things will fall from the sky. The whole army, all of us, we could be completely obliterated.”_

_“And if there are more then he’ll die! He’ll die, Ferdinand! We’ll never see him again! He needs us! He needs…” Sky blue eyes faltered to the ground, then darted up to meet Byleth’s own. “Professor, tell him, please, please tell him.” Caspar choked back a sob, the ash and grime that coated his face running down with fresh tears. “We can’t leave him. We can’t. I can’t leave him.”_

_Byleth tore her gaze from his desperate plea and looked out upon the devastation that had only moments ago been the most imposing fortress in all of the Empire. It was little more than a crater now. Her missing student had taken the rear of the retreat, healing the injured with magic, warping out those who were too injured to walk. Like poor Lysithea, her leg bent in a way it never should have, dragged out from beneath a fallen horse and then trying to endure the pain and hobble along with the rest of the chaotic withdrawal. If she had been closer when it happened– if she had saw and been able to grasp the threads of time… If she could have been the source of protection and guidance her poor students had believed in, maybe he wouldn’t have…_

“Or it could be a sort of ear infection. Nausea and a lack of balance often accompany that. Professor?” his placid eyes flashed with a hint of concern. 

“Linhardt…” Byleth whispered, as if her former student would vanish if she spoke his name too loudly. “So I am dead. But-” She felt as if she would vomit again. Linhardt couldn’t be here if she had simply somehow survived the siege on the palace. At best she could hope all she saw was only the lasting dream of death, but if this were truly some manner of afterlife then that meant… that meant that Edelgard died too. Just like Lin, she died because Byleth never had the strength to push forward on her own path. She let things play out as they would and meekly went along. Even the person she surrendered her life to in repentance still didn’t live to see the next morning. All of Edelgard’s suffering, all her strength and resolve in spite of it for the hope of a world where it wouldn’t happen again, all for it to die with her. Did any of her precious students even survive? Caspar and Flayn had been the only ones left… Lysithea had been sent back to Ordelia territory despite how much she pleaded. Would she see them here too?

Linhardt only tilted his head with curiosity. “Dead? As far as I’m aware, we’re both very much alive. Perhaps you’re running a fever too. Or some manner of stress caused delusions? Maybe Manuela would be able to better diagnose your issue. She just arrived in Enbarr for the reunion a few hours ago .”

Byleth’s head was spinning. Manuela was here too? She hadn’t even been deployed for the assault on the palace. She had insisted on staying behind to look after injured soldiers and civilians. How long had it been? Did time even matter in a world of lingering spirits? Maybe she lived a full life– found the love she always longed for and departed the realm of the living in contentment. But Byleth wondered if she could even face her fellow professor. After all that they had lost, and those that had died, could she even look in the eyes of the people she failed in her war? Lindhardt, Ferdinand, Leonie, Alois, Cyril– had Catherine even lived after she held the door for the commander she placed her trust in to enter the throne room only to give up her own life? She said she fought for Rhea and for what Byleth meant to the archbishop, but she had never been the same since Shamir had vanished in the five years since Byleth was gone. And what of those who died on the other side of her empty resistance? Ashe, buried in a hellish grave no one would ever visit, Lorenz, left bleeding on the bridge paved with dead soldiers, Bernie, apparently put to the sword in a fruitless attempt to seize Grondor and lost with maybe Dimitri and Claude and all the poor students that had followed them. Dorothea, reported dead before Byleth even knew she was fighting on Edelgard’s side, Hubert, who professed his belief in Edelgard’s pain and struggle in his very dying breath, and Petra, who held so much determined hate in her eyes when Byleth cut her down. What would they think of her? If Byleth knew this was what awaited her, then what could she have done differently? What could she have done to fix any of the people she had ruined without escaping to a long lost past and the regretful decisions it contained? Would anything have been better if she stood by the girl who reached out to her when she couldn’t bring herself to ask it of anyone else? The girl she turned away from. Maybe not. But it might have been better than the emptiness she felt now– people dying on her orders, on her blade, for a cause that did not really exist. 

“Byleth!” that haunting voice called out from behind, “Are you okay!?” Byleth did not dare to look behind her at the woman who offered every gesture of care that she had failed to return. She dared not look at the face of the man before her, who had never wanted to bring harm to another and yet let her drag him into meaningless bloodshed all the same. It was too much. It was all too much. Could she end herself here, she wondered? Could she keep being the coward she was and escape the punishment she knew she deserved but could not bring herself to face? Should she? What could she ever give them? An apology could never be enough, and it now seemed her death was not worthy either. Byleth buried her face into her hands, pressing her fingers painfully into her skin, into her tightly shut eyes, digging herself into what pain it could offer. And she screamed. She screamed until every ounce of breath left her lungs and the cry died in her throat. She did not breath in again– she refused. She refused to exist any longer. Not like this. She wished she could will herself to no longer exist, but she did not even have that mercy. The voices of the spectres around her did not fade even when she could no longer see them.

“I don’t know what's wrong with her. I’ve never seen her like this”

“I told her it might be best to visit Manuela. She’s here in Enbarr now. But as she is, I might need you to carry her. Maybe I could fetch Caspar to help us if you wait with her.”

“Please. I’m so worried. My love, I’m here, I promise you’ll be okay. We’re going to help you and you’re going to be okay.”

Byleth felt arms wrap tightly around her from behind, lifting her up from her nearly prone position and upright onto her knees.

“I love you. I love you so much and I’m here for you, just as you’ve always been here for me. As much as I promised years ago during our wedding. Even before then, when you were there for me when I could trust nobody to share my pain. I would never hurt you. I will never let you go.”

Byleth sucked in an inhale air and just as quickly expelled it with a ragged shudder, only kept up by the embrace that held her. “Wedding?” she felt hot tears welling in the corners of her eyes once again. “Love? Me? Love?” she repeated the words in a frantic mantra, as if they would make any more sense if she spoke them enough. “Hate me!” another sob reverberated through her chest, and her breaths came to her shallow and painful. “Is that what y-you wanted? You loved me?” she cried. “I th-threw that away! I threw you away! All of your hope– your trust! Please...” her voice began to fail her, crumbling to a hoarse whisper. “Please, Edelgard, please just hate me. Let me have that. I need to have that.” She felt Edelgard's arms tighten around her.

"I don't know what's happening. But I could never hate you, my love. I could never leave your side, no matter how you might feel." Byleth could hear the tremble in the woman's voice, soft, hesitant, and afraid. "No matter what happens, I won't leave your side." She felt a hand grasp around her own. "I love you. More than anything in the world, any treasured hope or dream I've come to realize in my struggle, I love the woman who helped me through it most of all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: personal issues or whatever
> 
> Heya, I'm not doing great. I learned about something awful from early in my life that's really messed me up. I'm in a spiral and can't figure out where I'll be each day. Today I felt numbly functional enough to write, and yesterday I had a panic attack that made me want to finish this chapter. I can't promise the quality, its hard to think. I don't even know if I wanted to finish it right there but I guess shorter chapters mean faster updates? I just wish I had more. But writing hurt/comfort scenes like this helped. I'm just glad I have a comfort ship (seriously look at my icon, which is based on how I actually look, and tell me that's not kinda funny to imagine. Or maybe its just that motorcycle loving, rough edged people like me need soft comfort too) and my writing right now as something to put myself into, especially when I feel for Edelgard now more than ever. I started writing this over a lost lover and friends I feel like are gone because I failed to help them enough, and now I have another reason to want to put myself into this. Sorry for the personal info but I've lived alone and half kept to myself since my ex years ago, I never allowed myself a real support system when all I wanted was to stand on my own and not be a strain. Obviously that was a mistake.  
> So this isn't a hiatus. I need to write. But I ain't sure what my updates will be like when every day feels like a dice roll on what I can even manage.
> 
> Anyway, want to make the bridging Byleth and Edelgard's disconnect seamless, ain't my style to drag that out more than it needs to be, but I promise it won't be another chapter of misunderstanding. Therapist Manuela is coming to mind as the solution.


End file.
